


Cousins

by lexwing



Series: Children of the Force [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Family Secrets, Gen, Teen Angst, Young Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22251529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexwing/pseuds/lexwing
Summary: In which Baby Yoda is no longer a baby, but continues to change the future trajectory of the Skywalker family nonetheless.
Relationships: Leia Organa/Han Solo, Luke Skywalker/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Children of the Force [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601830
Comments: 1
Kudos: 84





	Cousins

**Author's Note:**

> Note 1: Thanks to everyone who liked the original story, Children of the Force! I have decided to spin this out into an occasional series, as my bonkers life permits. This particular story contains spoilers for Claudia Gray’s novel Bloodline, which (at least for now) is still cannon. Mei is an original character; the others are all property of Disney. Please don’t sue.  
> Note 2: Until we get more seasons of the show, we will not know for sure Baby Yoda’s gender or name. However, considering how many times BY has already been referred to as “he” on the show I am going with him being male for this series. Let us also assume that of course the Mandalorian eventually gave the baby a name, perhaps with the advice of a certain Jedi.  
> Note 3: Aging up BY as a character is of course tricky. From canon we know BY was 50 years old when found, and that the original Yoda was training Jedi by the time he was 100. So for this story, which takes place ten years after my previous entry, let us say BY is very roughly equivalent to a human tween or at least an extremely precocious older child.

Ben Solo ran as fast as his long legs could carry him, heedless of the vines and branches that tried to impede his passage through the dense undergrowth. Instinctively, he lashed out with his training saber at anything big enough to trip him or knock him over, severing plant life left and right without even slowing down.

His lungs burned, and his muscles ached. Still, he ran.

Ben could not find his center, could not find the quiet light his master—no, his _uncle_ —had trained him for years to seek.

Instead, there was only anger, and a hurt that made his eyes sting as he ran as far away from the academy as he could get. 

It still wasn’t far enough. Tauntin V was a small planet.

When he could run no farther, he collapsed onto the mossy ground, his breath steaming in the night air. His training saber dropped to the ground, the orange blade extinguished.

_Was his mother still crying back at the school, where he had left her?_

_If so, good_ , Ben thought to himself as he panted.

_I told you so, boy,_ another voice, cold, slithering, said inside his head. _They are all against you_.

“Shut up!” Ben banged a fist against the side of his head. The action only managed to make his ears ring.

The voice, which had plagued Ben on and off since he had been a small child, only laughed.

_You fool_ , it said. _This is the way of the Jedi. Lies, always lies._

Ben was too upset to center or focus and to push the voice away as he usually did. 

He had spent years learning how to embrace the light specifically to keep the darkness at bay. And now, when he needed that skill the most, he couldn’t do it.

_Vader was a great man,_ the voice said. _Have I not always told you so? At last, you know the truth and can embrace your destiny._

“Shut up!” Ben screamed. 

He seized the saber again and jumped to his feet, simultaneously igniting it and swinging frantically at the nearest trees. 

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” He screamed as he hacked, splinters of wood scattering across the dark clearing where he stood.

It didn’t make him feel any better. But he kept slashing.

“Ben.” 

A soft, female voice made him whirl around, his thin, lanky body automatically assuming the defensive stance he’d been taught.

For one horrifying moment, he thought that perhaps his mother had witnessed his loss of control. 

The figure was too small and the voice too high to be Leia Organa-Solo.

Ben tried to catch his breath, his eyes adjusting to the darkness to see his young cousin standing a few yards away, her head cocked to one side as she gazed at him.

He grunted. “Go home, Mei. I don’t want you here.” 

He turned away from her.

“Why? Aren’t you done slicing up the forest yet? You’ve left quite the trail behind you, you know.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to push away his swirling feelings. 

He knew he would never be able to raise a hand against his eight-year-old cousin. But she didn’t need to know that.

“I don’t want you here. Go!” He yelled.

Instead of leaving, she sat down on a log and continued to look at him.

“Please, Mei,” he said more softly. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“You are hurting,” she said quietly. 

“Of course! It’s all lies!” Ben couldn’t help but raise his voice again. “They lied to me! My whole life, they’ve been lying to me!” He gesticulated wildly at her, trying to convey his devastation.

“They lied to me, too,” Mei said softly, her blue eyes shining in the dark.

Ben felt sick to his stomach. 

“I know, kid. I know.” 

He ran his hands through his shaggy, dark hair. His mom was always after him to cut it. He preferred it this way.

“Kriffing hell, Mei,” he said with a near-sob. 

He knew he should be humiliated at falling apart in front of someone half his age. 

But Mei had always seemed wise beyond her years. Right now, it definitely felt like she was the older of the two of them. _Her_ world did not seem to have just been turned upside down, even though it had been. 

She was so…calm. Just like her father.

At the thought of Luke Skywalker anger flared again inside Ben’s chest, hot and sweet.

_Uncle. Master. Liar…_

“What am I going to do now?” He said, more to himself than to Mei. “I always knew I was a freak, but this…”

“Come back inside. You’re not a freak, and you’re going to come back inside. It’s dark out here, and cold.”

“No way. No way am I going back inside and risking having to deal with _those people_ right now.”

For a wild moment, Ben wondered if he could swipe his uncle’s old X-wing. He could figure out how to fly it: there wasn’t a ship yet built that Ben couldn’t fly.

He gazed up at the stars overhead. Somewhere out there was another ship that could sweep him away from the wreckage of his life. 

He had no idea where the Falcon was, though. He never did, these days.

_Dad, for once, for once, why couldn’t you have been here when I really needed you?_ Ben thought. 

“You aren’t going to run into the grown-ups.” Mei corrected. “They are all still in the kitchen, talking about what to do. We can go in that window on the far side of the building, under the portico. You can go straight to your room from there. No one will know.”

“The other students…”

“Are all either asleep or in the training room practicing their forms.”

_Ignore the child,_ the cold voice in his head said. _She was sent to you with more lies. Tainted by Skywalker, she is. And tainted by her mother’s filthy blood._

The voice already sounded distant, though. Ben’s shields, so carefully honed over the years, were returning as his mind calmed. 

He took a deep breath and slammed the door to his mind shut.

The voice was gone. For now.

Mei was right. It was dark, and cold, and his clothes were sticking to the sweat of his body and growing clammy. He had no money and no transport off this planet, no matter how much he wanted to run.

He needed time. Time to process…oh gods…

Ben shuddered.

___

“A mess, you are,” a voice that was somehow at once squeaky and gravelly said the moment Ben slipped through his bedroom door.

“Karabast! Am I never allowed to have a moment’s peace in this place?” Ben complained at the small figure seated on the side of his bunk.

Ben turned away and yanked off his sweaty shirt.

“Peace, you seek, peace, how to find, you know,” Yaru said with a shrug.

Ben glanced at the door as he pulled a clean shirt over his head.

“Coming, no one is,” Yaru vowed. “Warn you, I will.”

“Thanks,” Ben said reluctantly.

Yaru still looked very much like the baby Ben had met ten years before, just a bit bigger. He still had almost no hair on top of his wrinkled green head and eyes like deep pools of dark water.

At least he could talk now, even if it was in the strange, backwards way Uncle Luke had warned them to expect.

_Luke._ With a hiss, Ben threw his training saber across the room. 

He knew Yaru would be able to feel the heated flair of his anger through the Force. 

Sure enough, the small creature’s ears dropped in dismay and he gave Ben a long, serious look.

Ben flopped into the only chair in his spartan student accommodations and put his hands over his face.

Yaru had exceptionally sharp hearing. Maybe it was the huge ears, or maybe it was a species thing. Ben didn’t know. Still…

“I guess you heard what happened,” Ben mumbled into his hands.

He cringed, remembering. He had been the one doing all the yelling.

“Heard, we did,” Yaru confirmed.

“The other students, too?!?” Ben shrieked in horror, his voice cracking slightly as he did so.

“Carried, your voice did,” Yaru said. “Heard you on Tatooine, they could have,” he said with a slight smile.

Ben leaned back in his seat, his head dropping. “Great. Like they need another excuse to hate me. It’s not enough I’m ten times better than them—now they’re all going to say it’s because of…of…him.”

_Vader_. Ben felt his throat closing up at the very name.

_Evil. Darkness. Sith Lord._

_Grandfather._

“How could they not tell me?” Ben moaned. “Why would you keep something like that from somebody?”

Yaru just looked at Ben.

“Ok, fine, I get why they didn’t tell the rest of the galaxy,” Ben amended. “But to not tell me? Tell me I’m, like, _infested_ with the Dark Side?”

“Believe that, you do not,” Yaru scoffed.

“I do. I am. It is in my blood. I’m not descended from Anakin Skywalker, Jedi hero. I’m descended from _Darth Vader_.”

“From both you are descended, I would say.”

“The Light and the Dark Sides are eternally in conflict, Yaru, you know that: you’ve heard Luke lecture about it almost as often as I have. No wonder I’ve felt so torn my whole life! Like nothing I ever did was right, or good enough.”

“Protecting you, your parents and Master Luke were,” Yaru corrected. “Protecting young Padmé as well. Wrong, the decision may have been. Certain, I am, that out of love, it was done.”

“When they told me, I just wanted to tear the whole world apart with my bare hands,” Ben confessed. “That’s why I ran. It was like I was drowning in darkness, but I’ve never felt so strong.” He paused for a moment. “I heard the voice again, too.”

Yaru was the only other living soul who knew about Ben’s haunting voice. 

Ben had never been able to articulate to his parents or to Luke about the frightening whispers he heard. As a small child Ben had been afraid the voice might somehow harm those he loved, mainly because it had repeatedly threatened to do so if Ben didn’t obey it. 

Now he was older, Ben feared his family not believing him, or, worse, laughing at him.

With Yaru, though, it was different. Even as a baby, he had sensed the danger to Ben through the Force. The two of them had worked hard together over the years, building up Ben’s shields to the point that, now, most of the time, Ben was alone in his thoughts. Unless he became distressed, or angry.

_That must be the Vader in me, too_ , he shivered. _Does Dad know? Is that why he let Mom dump me in this desolate place with other kids who hate me?_

Ben paused for just a moment to consider what the news that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were the same person would mean for the rest of the family. 

His mother’s political career in the New Senate was as good as over, as were those of most of her allies. Many of the alliances she had worked so hard to build since she had been his age were damaged, perhaps irreparably. 

She had not said any of this when they had all been seated around the table and she had delivered the news of her humiliation before the rest of the Senate. But Ben had sensed it.

“I refuse to feel sorry for her,” Ben now insisted. “It’s her fault I’m torn between two worlds.”

“Yes, and between two worlds, no one can ever live,” Yaru said with a small grin.

Ben glanced at the pauldron Yaru wore on his right shoulder, over his padawan robes. It was made of beskar, and carried the sigil of his clan.

There were only two people in Yaru’s clan, but by Mandalorian law, that was enough.

Yaru was many things. 

He was growing up dividing his time between the Jedi Academy and Mandalore. Although the two worlds could not have been more different, he nonetheless had a small, green foot in both. Padmé—Mei to the family—was following in the path he was blazing, tied to Mandalore through her mother just as Yaru was through Din Djarin.

Yaru was tiny yet powerful. Wise and naive. Both adult and child at the same time. Ben had never known, and would likely never know, what to make of him.

“Ok, genius,” Ben now told him. “I’m at about the lowest I can possibly get.” 

He knew it was mean, but he was so miserable he could not help needling the other boy a bit. 

“So what am I supposed to do now? What would the Jedi tell me to do, huh? Or, better yet, what would a Mandalorian say?”

Yaru folded his little legs together on the bunk. He looked calmly at Ben.

“Simple, these answers are,” Yaru said. “Seen them yourself, you should have. Use your muscles, you do, but not your brain,” he retorted.

“Big talk, little guy,” Ben challenged. “Let’s hear it.”

“Say the Jedi, light and dark, each is necessary. Up needs down. Black needs white. Carry both within us, all living things do. Vader, no Vader, change this does not. You are Jedi; you know.”

“I can’t be a Jedi now, Yaru, don’t you see that? Not with Vader’s blood in my veins.”

“No different you are than before,” Yaru said firmly. “Same in the Force as always. Struggle, you will, but struggle, you always have. Much help you have. Walk the path with you, they will. I will.”

For the first time Ben felt a small spark of hope inside him.

“And the Mandalorians? What would they say?” He couldn’t help but ask.

Yaru chuckled. “Mandalorians say, clan, first comes. Always, clan, first comes. This is the way. Simple, yes? But also true.” 

Ben sighed. “I’m not sure I can do it, Yaru. I’m not sure I have it in me to forgive something this big.”

Yaru just looked at him and shook his small head.

“My friend you are, Ben Solo.”

He smiled. 

“But sometimes, very stupid you are.”

The End


End file.
